


Keeper of the Champion

by foundCarcosa



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-28
Updated: 2012-05-28
Packaged: 2017-11-06 05:06:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/415028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundCarcosa/pseuds/foundCarcosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Severin Hawke might have been the saviour of Kirkwall for a little while, but more importantly than that, he had a saviour of his own -- a slight elf woman who did the simplest things with the utmost care.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keeper of the Champion

The dwarf asks, “What is it about her, though? Daisy. You look at her the way Choir Boy looks at Andraste.” He takes a swig from his cup and then shakes his head. “Nah, that’s not quite right. He might be pretty obsessed, but I don’t think he wants her in that way…

Anyway, not my point. Tell me about Merrill.”

—-

Severin unhooks the harness holding his greatsword in place as soon as he’s safely within the estate, the heavy instrument thudding to the floor and being dragged along as he trudges into the great room. Bodahn’s greeting barely registers, his ears ringing insistently from the constant _tseer-tseer_ of mage staves and the clarion-bell clanging of steel against steel. The heat of the fireplace even irritates him, prickly against his windburned flesh and hot under his heavy armour.

He pauses in the middle of the floor, looking around as if he’d accidentally stumbled into the wrong mansion.

Merrill rushes out of the bedroom, peering at him over the balcony. She starts to speak, starts to give some gaily-chirped greeting, but hesitates when her eyes focus upon him.  
Haggard. Weary. Bruises blooming on his cheek, his temple, certainly no better than those blooming in places yet unseen. White hair tinged greyish-brown by the grime of Darktown, the dust of Lowtown, the detritus picked up off rusty chests and piles of rubble and transferred to his hair when he impatiently rakes it off his sweating forehead before diving headlong into another skirmish.

“Stay home, Merrill,” he tells her before he leaves, every time. “Please. You know I don’t underestimate you, right?”

“I know, but—”

“Stay here. You give me something to come home to.”

Merrill’s brow creases deeply as she frowns, watching Severin trudge towards the desk where a significant amount of correspondence awaits his perusal. It is routine, checking the desk, the way Bodahn’s greetings and Marten the mabari’s low welcome-back-friend woofs are, but nothing in his dulled-gemstone eyes suggest he is even paying attention to the words he is reading.

Without saying a word, Merrill snaps her fingers and hurries back towards the master suite.

Five minutes later, Severin is still standing at the desk, wavering slightly as his muscles protest in agony, trying to make sense of the Seneschal’s too-bold script. He dimly hears Merrill anxiously hiss Bodahn’s name from another room, and his head lifts slightly — he wants to go to her, but he is so dazed he can’t even tear himself away to do so — but a moment later he’s forgotten it altogether.

His ears still ring, his muscles still throb, and his brain still feels as though it’s been through a meat grinder.  
Perhaps he will simply drop, and fall into the blissful blackness of sleep. Or death.  
That would be nice…

…But it is Merrill’s hand that rouses him, plucking the wrinkled letter out of his hand and slipping her fingers around his. She tugs at him until he moves, the grinding of the armour making his teeth knock painfully against each other.  
She should be too small to move him, but the two dwarves watch as she patiently guides him up the stairs and to their chambers, at one point wrapping both her arms around one of his to get him to move more quickly.

“What do you think, Sandal?” Bodahn — who graciously saved her from flooding the first floor a couple of minutes ago — says, stroking his beard. “Think they’ll make it to the bath before he drops?”  
Sandal, of course, stares impassively after them but doesn’t answer.

Severin’s armour is complex, but Merrill is stubborn — she fumbles for the closures and latches, letting out a little gust of air in a satisfied exclamation every time she manages to loosen and remove a greave or a gauntlet. Severin watches her with bleary eyes, less dazed but no less exhausted, and thinks about how nice a full-body hug from her would feel.

She nudges him into helping her remove the mail and linen undergarments, and makes short work of the smalls, and by then the scent of the warm bathwater is just reaching his scorched nostrils.  
She doffs her houserobes and climbs in with him, smiling hopefully as he sinks into the fragrant water, the smile morphing into a beam when a small sigh of relief escapes his parched lips.

He closes his eyes as she bathes him, dipping a soft cloth into the water and dabbing gently at every bruise and laceration, large eyes darting to his face every time to make sure she wasn’t hurting him needlessly. At one point, he winces and bites back a hiss, and she snatches her hand away to stare at him anxiously until his face again relaxes. A soft kiss to his jawline, and she continues her painstaking work.  
She bathes him completely, head to toe, not seeming to tire or bore. Occasionally, she sings, snatches of lilting elven song that bring the strange prick of tears to his eyes.

Kirkwall is not beautiful, but somehow she has managed to remain so.

When she is finished, she lets the cloth drop and curls up against him, and she leans against bruised and abused flesh but he doesn’t dare make a sound, and he can feel a smile trying to stretch worn-out muscles as her hands cup his face and her lips touch his temple, his cheek, his jaw, the tip of his nose. Tension melts into the bathwater along with the dust and dirt and grime of Kirkwall and environs, along with suppressed sorrow and irrational rage and the poison that every kill injects into his mind and heart.

“‘M home,” he mumbles, “aren’t I.”

He feels Merrill’s beam against his neck, followed by a soft kiss. “Of course you are. So’m I, you know.”

“You’ll get… tired of this. Me. ‘m not… all together. You know.”

“You are all together. I’ll keep you together. I’m good at fixing things.” It’s not the words that convince him, but the certainty in her voice. The strength that he can’t hope to match, the love he can only dream of returning.

—-

“She’s… great,” Severin replies, and Varric raises an eyebrow.

“She’s great,” he echoes.

“She’s my keeper,” Severin finally amends, and will say no more.


End file.
